ABB announces consultants’ checklist for selecting variable-speed drives

Friday, May 31, 2020

ABB has prepared a guide for water industry consultants and contractors: “Using variable-speed drives in the water industry – A checklist for consultants and contractors”. It highlights many of the new drive features that can help deliver the best possible performance from the motor-driven application.

In recent years, the performance of VSDs has improved dramatically. They offer greater energy efficiency and lower energy bills, reduced maintenance and more flexibility for end users, as well as faster installation and commissioning for contractors. Yet an estimated 70 percent of water industry consultants, contractors and end-users may not be using the most up-to-date specifications when selecting VSDs.

For consultants, the reason is that they do not actually purchase drives, so they are not always targeted with the latest information by manufacturers. ABB’s checklist is designed to arm them with the knowledge they need. It provides a definitive guide to all the products and services features and associated benefits available from today’s VSDs.

Features of particular benefit to the water industry include the inclusion within many drives of intelligent pump functions such as level control, soft pipe filling, sleep and boost, pump cleaning, pump protection, flow calculations and multi-pump control.

Connecting drives to a water plant’s control system is made easy by selecting pre-defined macros or by simply connecting to one of several built-in fieldbus options. Also, many of today’s drives have built-in PID controllers that allow them to cope with demanding pump and fan functions without the added expense of an external controller.

But it’s not just product features that have moved with the times. VSD suppliers are acutely aware of the need to support customers throughout the life-cycle of their installation and offer a host of services. These include energy, productivity and harmonics appraisals, installation and start-up services and preventive maintenance plans.

Source: ABB